


Junkyard Hounds

by Mamcine_Oxfeather



Category: Reservoir Dogs (1992)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reverse Roles, M/M, Orange is a crook, White is a cop, pretend you're reading this through a vintage photo filter lol
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-07-21
Packaged: 2020-02-07 07:11:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18615691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mamcine_Oxfeather/pseuds/Mamcine_Oxfeather
Summary: The jacket met the back of the chair he claimed at Papa Joe's elbow, revealing a set of shoulders that argued with his slinking toady posture and his bow-legged high-noon-showdown gait.  Those shoulders said 'fighter', every scar and tattoo and patch of wiry muscle.  The bar table was thin and high, and it was no great strain to offer a light across the distance for the guy's cigarillo (vanilla, cheap and bent from its journey through his pocket), so Larry did just that.





	1. Surfin' USA

Lawrence 'Micky' Dimmick came from a long line of Irish beat-cops.

Most of his stocky build was mid-west rather than big apple, Brewers over Yankees over Giants as far as the baseball diamond was concerned - but that didn't stop New York from sinking its teeth into his walk, into his low-slung fist fights, into the way he spoke. It was Dimmick's proud second year after having scored Plainclothes Detective that he took the transfer to California. There were rumors of that last job, said the east coast wasn't safe for his likeness any more. That case had ended bloody, but the higher-ups weren't able to decide if the victory deserved a promotion or a transfer, so they gave Micky both.

The rumors continued to float up from the anchor of Lawrence Dimmick's career. 'Kingpin' Salvatore hadn't been much older than Micky himself, and they'd had a lot more in common than carefully attenuated disdain for the Red Sox. California would have to be a fresh start away from the steaming pile of disaster Salvatore had left behind.

It wasn't as if Micky would miss the east coast. He'd miss the few friends his job allowed him to have, sure; Alabama had been a great partner, but she had Clarence at the end of it all and Micky only ever had his paycheck to come home to.

A paycheck and a lot of bloody nightmares, only to wake up to an early-morning office buzzing too loudly about the wire transcripts and just how chummy Micky had been willing to get with his target and fuck _that_  for a shaved bag of dicks; if he was going to get ousted for being too damn good at his job then hell, he'd go and be an excellent cop for somebody else's city. Trading the blitzroads of the northeast for the palm trees of the southwest while he was at it, as relaxing as an involuntary vacation could be.

* * *

Micky's new partner was waiting for him at the bus station; a stodgy black man in clothes ten years too young for his potbelly named Jim Holdaway.  Micky was settled a week at the motel before Holdaway got around to introducing him to an inside contact that called himself 'Longbeach Mike'.  The three shared beers and cigarettes in the loudly painted L.A. apartment that was to be Lawrence Dimmick's home for the next year.

"That's a good nickname, man, but you're going to have to choose another."

Micky blinked up from his own file, papers and binders and city planning charts spread out on the floor between he and Holdaway.  Longbeach had been dismissed not half an hour prior, citing girl troubles.  "What's wrong with it? They don't know a guy named Micky from any other Tom Dick 'n Harry on the west side."

"Exactly, man."  Holdaway had an easy confidence in his partnership, generous with compliments as much as he was with sage criticism.  The thing was, Micky simply didn't look like a cop, and appearance was ninety percent of deception.  The rest was just Improv, and Holdaway wasn't going to fail his partner by letting him get into any situation out of character.  "Ain't no cat this side of the Mason Dixon going to understand that's an Irish thing, and if they did they'd think it was something a cop would go by.  People these days watch too many damn movies," A gruff laugh. "Shit. What's your first name? Lawrence? Larry? Larry sounds way more westcoast than Micky, man, believe me."

"Okay sure, I believe you." The smile glinted in his eyes but did nothing to lift the near scowl Micky's mouth seemed stuck in (like a bulldog, like a bruiser, like a middle weight champion with his hair grown out in the cold Wisconsin Winter and brushed back in a thick wave to mimic the slick of a New York Italiano).  He pushed the papers around his knees and fished out a marked page. "This my neighborhood?"

Holdaway glanced up from the character profile he was penning. "Yeah. We can go 'round tomorrow and I can show you what's changed since you've been away,  _Larry_."

Micky blinked, nonplussed. Christ, but that was going to take some getting used to.

* * *

It took three months for 'Larry' to get settled in Los Angeles, making sale and dealing cards with a few of Longbeach Mike's contacts to put a little genuity in his drug-dealer facade. By then Lawrence Dimmick had been introduced to the LA precinct, a crowd that was a whole helluva lot sunnier compared to the dour coffee-soaked NY station. He laughed to himself when he met the cadets and the beats, trying to recall a time when he himself had been so nervous and proud in his blues. Twenty eight was young for a detective, but the scene needed young.

Young and creative and fearless, and Micky bringing the cool confidence of a man whose job was in his very blood. He joked, they laughed. He'd wink. One or two would swoon. Stocky didn't stop him from Charming; made it better somehow actually, like you could trust him to know what imperfection meant and therefore to forgive your own flaws. Holdaway sat back, and observed.

Hell, Holdaway could barely contain his pride. Here was Micky slipping into Larry's skin (as easily as he had slipped into a fitted Hawaiian shirt) like he was already on the case, taking in names and faces that Holdaway would later use as quiz fodder over a greasy basket of nachos and a pitcher of beer. Shit, all they had to do was get Larry to the beach a few days a week, maybe scare the winter outta his skin and he'd fit right in. The accent could stay; it served to tell half a story, filled in the blanks as to just where Larry had been dealing before an assault charge forced him back home and back into Longbeach's circle.

Larry couldn't get too chummy in the station, though, lest some boot recognize him on the street and make a fatal reference; so he was ferreted away like Elvis from the building, ducking out of back entrance to waiting cab to seedy diner rendezvous with Longbeach.

* * *

Things were never going to be easier for Lawrence Dimmick than that day meeting the station. He wasn't under any delusions; it was a tough job he signed up for. A dangerous one. He needed the stamina to keep in character as well as the dissociation to recover himself when the job was over. Micky's one true flaw had always been his compassion; it made him a good cop but wasn't so great for detective work wherein he'd have to first befriend and then betray his targets. He was bad at handling that, at separating Micky from Larry from the son of Minerva and Haverd Dimmick.

Holdaway wasn't just a coach; he was also a confidante and a therapist, and an hour every sunday was dedicated to taking personal inventory of Larry's progress.

"I don't want you thinking I'm not prepared for this."

Holdaway sucked his teeth, nodding. "I know you're good at this job, man. I also know it's the good ones who got to struggle through the most shit. Sensitive artist types, yanno." He elbowed his way onto the couch, showing the check-sheet to Larry so he'd stop resisting the routine necessaries.

"So what about it, tough guy?" Larry snatched the paper with unexpected dexterity, holding it close and scrunching up his face like he didn't read too good (it was part of the character, to be a tad illiterate). He relaxed, handing the sheet back to Holdaway. "Got anything else for me? Besides redundant fucking questions, I mean."

Holdaway shrugged, clicking his pen. "I got a dialogue refinery, and an anecdote you could practice on. You're down with the vulgarities but I'm afraid your vernacular remains way too fucking refined, my man." A helpless laugh. "Nothing more suspicious than an intelligent drug-dealer."

"What about an intelligent thief? I was a thief and a grift for the TenTrees case."

Holdaway made a pensive noise in the back of his throat, spectacles sliding down his broad nose with late-summer evening sweat. He pushed the specs back up and smoothed fingers over his sweatband, coughing once to clear his throat. "Firstly and foremostly you're a dealer, though. Longbeach has already pitched the story that you're just looking to branch out into something more lucrative. No more of this dime-bagging shit, you're looking to play ball with the big cats."

Larry shrugged, picking himself up from the couch to fish a cold soda out of the fridge (which Holdaway declined with a small amount of disdain for grown men who'd prefer cola over a stout brew). "I like thieves. They got more opportunity for honor that dealers don't. And pimps... Don't get me started. Pimps are worst of all."

"Yeah well, despite how well it'd fit your profile, you ain't a pimp, so quitcher belly-aching. You're a dealer looking to climb ladders and get out of that life. Play it smart or play it like it's an issue with honor or whatever; shit, I trust your instincts."

Larry shrugged again, bolstered but not really satisfied. "So what's this anecdote? Anything I need to collaborate with 'Bama back east?"

"Naw, not that complicated." Holdaway bent to his briefcase, pulling out a small manuscript.

Larry whistled low, flipping the pages and skimming them. "Do I need to get ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille?"

With a scoff, Holdaway shook his head. "What if I say yes? The real thing goes down a week from now. You'll get the call, outta nowhere, and you don't wanna be caught with your dick in your hands." Despite his earlier criticism, Holdaway took a pull from Larry's cola. "So let's hear you put a little Goodfellas into that dialogue."

Larry nodded, reading the first few lines of the front page before he got to 'commode'. "Commode? Really?"

Holdaway laughed. "Ever notice how dumb crooks try to force their vocab to greater heights? Thought you'd get a kick out of that."

"Har-dy fucking har," Larry drawled, but the smile was back in his eyes. Commode. Yeah. It fit easily in his mouth and in the back of his mind, a bit of the icy alleys of Milwaukee and Boston settled with a bloodied baseball bat and a carpetbag full of cocaine.  Larry took form around that story, so by the fifth telling of it the 'ey' and the 'wise guy' and the deep scar of cigar smoke had settled heavy in his voice.  Larry was young, but suddenly Larry was seasoned, and a drug dealer had no business living to any old age anyhow, and the story of wanting to get out of that scene and into something bigger and better had solidified in Larry's confidence.


	2. Fulsom Prison Hues

'Papa' Joe Cabot was a heap of gravel piled into mobility, gifted with two beady eyes and garnished with a phlegmy tobacco cough.  He dressed in high-count European threads despite the L.A. heat, bald head high-shined by sweat.  Cabot was immediately impressed with Larry, whose introductory greeting had pronounced his last name in its correct Italian inflection ( _ka-boe_ , not  _ka-bot_ ).  Larry was then invited to call Joe 'Papa', and the return grin was as two bulldogs having shuffled their feet and squared their shoulders and commiserated over a shared t-bone on how much hard fucking work it was being a bulldog in a world full of speed-balling terriers.

It was vintage brandy between them, though, not steak.  Papa Joe's son, 'Nice-Guy' Eddie Cabot was tall and broad, athleticism hidden behind layers of unfortunate genetics.  He had accompanied the family security detail and spent more of his time chatting up Longbeach than paying any attention to the new hire making intelligent conversation with his father, of whom he was an entire head taller and shades more amicable, dopey-eyed and smart-mouthed and doubtlessly ruthless.  The relationship Larry observed was that of a father and son who were very close, not only as family but as business partners.  A fairly dangerous combination - usually in family operations there were dramas and leverages that could be taken advantage of, but Papa Joe Cabot and Nice-Guy Eddie were a unified front.

The brandy had soothed Larry's initial nervousness, and he found himself calling Joseph Cabot 'Papa' as easily as if he'd known him for years, and Cabot responded with a nick-name he afforded his own son.

"So what are ya credentials, Junior?"

It had taken Larry a moment to realize that it was, in fact, he who was being addressed and not Eddie (who had disappeared to take Longbeach up on an offer for a transaction and would later reappear all coked up - bright as Sunday fucking Christmas).  Larry's creativity had stalled, and Papa Joe cleared his throat and spat into a cocktail napkin before affixing his cigar in the heavy scar of his mouth.

Larry shrugged, tapping the pack of Apple Jack Smooths against the heel of his palm before plucking one free and worrying the filter at the corner of his grimace. "I haven't been in town for, what, little more'n a decade? All my credentials washed up on the east coast, and there's nothin' I can do to change that. I got a few deals started, but it's feeling like the same ol' shit and there ain't nothing stopping it from going tits-up again. 'Specially now that I hear this city got a new D.A. head, I gotta watch my ass." Another helpless shrug. "I want out, but I don't want  _out_ , Papa. More than that, I want up. Something with a bigger take, something I can maybe, I dunno, disappear to Mexico with."

"Sure, sure," Papa waved his hand down. "But what are yer  _credentials_?"

Larry took a breath, knocked back the sickly-sweet brandy, and began to recite the commode story.

It was about halfway in the telling of the anecdote that their late fourth party appeared; some trusted contact of Papa Joe's who had been invited to the interview on account of his, quote, 'instinct'.  Larry faltered at the lack of introduction, but recovered quickly.  The new arrival was L.A. Hustler personified, sallow and untouched by the California sun, large green eyes heavy with sleep or hangover or withdrawal.  He shuffled up to the table and raked fingers through limp blonde hair, smiling like something wounded and mean in a black double-patched leather jacket.

The jacket met the back of the chair he claimed at Papa Joe's elbow, revealing a set of shoulders that argued with his slinking toady posture and his bow-legged high-noon-showdown gait.  Those shoulders said 'fighter', every scar and tattoo and patch of wiry muscle.  The bar table was thin and high, and it was no great strain to offer a light across the distance for the guy's cigarillo (vanilla, cheap and bent from its journey through his pocket), so Larry did just that.

When Larry got to the part in his story where he's calmly drying his hands with a felonious amount of weed in his carry-on, new guy reveals a sharp-toothed grin to accompany Joe's sympathetic chortle.  "So what'd you do then, besides shit yerself?" It was nasally, that voice, grazing the underbelly of the city like any classic film villain, a smooth detached drawl. Larry thought he detected a hint of cheap London, or maybe a childhood in the dusty projects of Australia. New Arrival was inspecting Larry from a cool side-glance, watching without looking.

"Finished my business, took my bag and left. Dog going apeshit the whole time."  Larry polished off his White Russian to a round of laughter. New Arrival ordered a Screwdriver and Papa Joe paused in his introductions to assign them nicknames.

"Mr... Orange here is an old colleague of mine."  Joe grumbled.  "Lissen here now, Mr., ah, White."

Larry smiled with just his eyes, Mr. Orange snickering down at his drink.

"No names," Joe dropped a heavy mitt on the table, empty glasses ringing.  "Not 'cause I don't trust any of you," he straightened in his seat, palming the lapel of his jacket like an old Admiral.  "But because I respects yer fukken privacy.  An' you'll do the same, y'hear?"

"Sure, sure." Mr. Orange waves at Papa Joe like he's heard all this before.  "This the kid, then?"

Larry allowed himself to bristle visibly.  This 'Orange' character looked like he'd been around the block, sure, but there was no way he was out of his thirties, if that.  Heroin had tattooed the inside of his left arm like the initials of a bad girlfriend, and drugs did everything but preserve one's youthful grace.  Larry tried to clear the booze from his vision and squared his jaw, studying the upstart as surely as he himself was being studied.  There, at the corner of Orange's eyes, the crow's feet.  The hard squint of someone used to casually insulting bruisers.

Papa Joe physically inserted his bulk between their stare-down, rumbling an affirmative to Orange's question.  "Junior here ain't got the credentials, but he wants in.  I needs yer vote on the matter."

"Oh, welly well well."  Orange sat back in the high stool, arms crossed behind his head as he stared down the length of his beak at Larry.  On anybody else, that nose would look ridiculous, but on this Orange character it erred on the side of wolfish.  "Might be a bit of a hot-head.  Got the eyebrows of an Irishman." (Larry scowled deeply and honestly.) "And a faggoty haircut."

Larry stood from his seat.  In any circle, thems was fightin' woids.

Eddie snorted into his beer.  "That's a laugh.  Ain't daddy been telling you to get that floppy beachboy mop of yours clipped already?"

Larry was surprised with the familiarity Eddie was suddenly revealing, but took it all in stride.  His faggoty Irish blood was still hot on the defense, though.  Orange had sneered back at Eddie Cabot and idly tossed a balled-up napkin at him. "Your ma likes something to hold onto."

The evening continued in much the same vein; good-natured chuckling after ribald insults between friends. Drinks and smokes diminished, Orange took over for the evening's entertainment like a natural lackey who was used to catering to the Cabots.  Orange, as far as Larry's report went, had a dangerous charm that would be difficult to whittle down to manageable proportions.  Micky did not include his suspicions that it might come to blows between the thug Larry was supposed to be and the thug Orange actually was, his own instincts sensing a paradigm shift in group dynamics of the hierarchies of violent men.  It was just conjecture, and maybe a little too much drink and ethnicity playing unfair cards against his pride.  The men with whom he was supposed to work in the next few months didn't have to like Larry, but his life depended on them respecting him.

Another name had made it into the report, though a nickname.  Some childhood friend of Eddie's with the greaser throw-back 'Toothpick', and at the mention of his parole Orange had closed himself off.  Papa Joe filled the space left behind with his own huffing pride.  Larry chewed the new info over like a dog distracted from its fight with a bone.  If Toothpick was a parole from four years of good behavior in penn, then his identity was just a file search out of Holdaway's grasp - even closer once Larry met the guy and had a face to put to a document.

The evening ended, surprisingly, with an apology.  Joe had shook Larry's hand and clapped him on the back with a few promising words of praise, then grumbled at Eddie's absence as if he'd forgotten that he'd been there until ten minutes hence (this is your brain, this is your brain on drugs, and  _this_  is your brain once old age catches up to it).  Longbeach had flashed a thumbs-up and Orange had been waiting behind Joe's departure to offer his hand and grin around a 'sorry-for-the-shit-just-testing-the-cut-of-your-gib' spiel.

Larry hardly remembered what Orange had said exactly because damn if that grin wasn't razor sharp and that hand warm and dry and bony, cheap vanilla cigarillo smoke lingering in the back of Larry's throat like he'd taken it shotgun.

That didn't make it into the report, either.

* * *

"So whaddya think, Fred?"

The interior of Joseph Cabot's pearly white limousine was soaked in years of cigar smoke and criminal rendezvous; you couldn't get the bloodstains out of the trunk's felt lining and the minibar had been dry-docked years hence.  Orange sat back, comfortable in the leather of the seats as well as in the warm rumbling envelope of Papa Joe Cabot's confidence.

"I dunno what to think, honestly.  Seems like a goodfella; nothing unusual stands out.  Might not be good for the job, though.  We need cool heads."

"He's smart.  Kept a cool head in that train station restroom, dinnit he?"

Orange held both hands up.  "Hey, I ain't arguin'.  But I bet he's smart enough to know what kinda story is gonna get him this job," he tapped his forehead and points back at Joe, "Coulda been a mall cop with a lost poodle in that commode for all we know."

Joe laughed, the crags of his face folding over with thought.  "Kept a cool head when you was baiting him."

Orange's return laugh was sharp and derisive.  "The only reason he didn't reach over and pop me one was because you were standing between us.  You ain't gonna be there on this job, and I know you done hired some pricks way mouthier than me."

Joe growled through his teeth. "Fellas that could do with a good gob-smack, you ask me."

"But not on a job."

"I'd half wish to smack 'em myself, sometimes. You young fuckin' jokers."

Orange's whole body shrugged, but he couldn't help grinning.  "I'm not sayin' he don't deserve the chance to prove himself, Papa. Just... you know.  That's the only thing I'd be worried over, if you let him in on the team.  Eddie would have his hands full keeping the peace."

Joe's heavy face lit up.  "Yeah," he chuckled, sitting back with his cigar. "Yeah, but I kinda like that idea. Test the kid's chops, see how he handles the prollem.  Gotta work with all sorts in this business, and I wanna see how my boy gains their cooperation."

"All right," Orange pursed his mouth in that speculative 'don't-come-running-to-me-cos-I'd-told-you-so' way.  "I'll save ya the details when somebody ends up dead."

"Any upstart going to put his own pride before the job deserves to end up dead," Joe grumbled sternly around a cloud of cigar smoke, jabbing a thick finger through the lowtown jazz that filled the cabin.  "If our new mick is the one pulling the trigger - hell, then he's doing us a favor, 'cus ain't no room on this team for a fella what don't know how to read a man and back the fuck down."

Orange's frown turned academic, thumb scratching just under his chin. "What if it's the mick who needs to back the fuck down?"

Joe's laugh carried the heavy wisdom of his years, "Well we know he's smart enough to cotton the fuckin' difference, don't we?"

* * *

That wasn't hardly the end of the interview, Holdaway had warned.  It seemed Larry had passed what had been termed 'an inspection of temperament', and was told that he need only sit tight until he was contacted again.

"Another meet-n-greet, probably.  You say the big cat took a shining to you?  Don't mean shit."

Larry scowled out at his half-refurbished apartment, shifting the bright blue plastic of the phone receiver to pin between shoulder and ear. "What? It means something; it's gotta." He set the can of off-white paint to the step ladder and navigated around the phone cord to reach the kitchen sink.

"Nope.  I seen the friendliest, most cordial motherfuckers ever turn around and stab their best friends for a bigger take of the cut.  Just 'cos he's laughing, don't mean he's happy."  Holdaway sighed, and Larry could almost see the cigarette smoke brushing down the phone.  "Just 'cos you all chummy doesn't mean you're off the hook.  Far from it.  We're reaching the point of radio silence, you and I, did you know that?"

Larry was a little lost at Holdaway's change of reference.  "Uh," summed up his thoughts as he rinsed the paint brushes in short scrubbing bursts.

"You'll still be making the reports, and I'll have agents dressed as customers for your product drop by and pick them up, but with Cabot, man... They'll do everything.  They'll check for phone taps, search your persons for a wire, have you followed.  If this job's so big that he's gonna put you through the ringer, and pull some cat-in-a-mask, no-names shit, hell.  I might as well start typing up your fake juvy record right the fuck now.  They'll go that deep."

"Things a little more intense between cops an' robbers on the west coast?"

"You're damn fucking straight they are.  It's James-Bond shit.  It's a war, man.  You're infiltrating ze Reds."

Larry chewed that over, falling into the couch with a rustle of dustcloth.  "Christ, Holdaway.  It's not like I'm going in blind."

"Yeah, yeah, but I'm gonna worry for your stumpy ass anyway.  You got their favor a little too easy, in my time-honored fucking opinion."

Larry's laugh was explosive.  "It weren't easy! Not for me! But they told you I was good, didn't they? Back east, they musta said as much."

"Pride is the hubris of - "

Larry snorted.  "Priiiide.  What is that shit, it's not pride if it's just a plain fact.  I do a good crook.  I'm good at it.  Relax."

"I'm not making any promises, and I know you'll do good.  It's my job to worry, and your job to stay the fuck alive. Anything smells like so much fresh garbage to you, I want you out.  So much as a whiff of a stale pizza box, I'm serious, stop giggling you proud little cocksucker, and listen to me."

Larry made the effort to sober.  "All right, Holdaway, alright.  I love you too.  Send nana my regards."

"You got the balls, man.  You got 'em.  Might even have the brains too.  There is a such thing as having too much of both.  Be as confident as you want; whatever helps you sleep at night, but remember that your character doesn't have the reputation to be pulling any John Wayne horseshit.  I want you to do that for me, okay?  Larry the White Russian don't have any friends up this coast.  Just keep that in mind.  Try humility for once."

Larry kicked his feet up on the arm of the couch, scratching a rib.  "I'll take that to heart.  When do you think the blackout's going to start?"

"Depends on how fast they get back to you.  I'll meet you at the usual spot for your report of the encounter, and then you'll be flying solo.  Stake-out team across the street only a radio buzz away, but your badge and radio and weapon better be in that floor safe if you ever wanna bring your new colleagues over for beers or some shit."

"Okay, ma.  Anything else?"

"Yeah.  You should use eggshell insteada papyrus for the kitchen.  Papyrus makes it too dingy, but a nice bright paint gonna make that small space open right up."

Larry hung up with an expletive, and a laugh.

 

 


	3. Fleetwood Jacked

Freddy had seen six months in county. Those words don't make a lot of sense on their own; seeing is not the same as serving, six months can't be measured if you don't got a calendar, and what is a county but an open piece of land marked only by invisible lines on a map. Maybe a road sign or two.

He'd been arrested, if wording it that way could make it any clearer, but it didn't. 'Arrest' can mean so many things, like a cessation or a pause. He'd been paused.

Stuck.

Some fellas can do time and brag about it, wear it like a badge like maybe this Parole cat coming in on the job who'd seen four years (four years, it was impossible to consider) for the Cabots. Freddy couldn't. Brag, that is. He'd gotten out, finished the paperwork, attended the Programs. Sometimes you chase the dragon, and sometimes the dragon gets hungry and decides it wants to chase you.

And sometimes you fistfight your wife and pass out foaming at the mouth in the bad end of a police car. That hadn't been the heroin, though. Just the usual bullshit that comes knocking when you're one of the smaller guys in a business that involves taking from those perceived as weaker than yourself. Sometimes Freddy got to fighting anyone who'd look at him, because he'd grown up doing it and couldn't just sit down and eat dinner and pay the bills like a good husband.

Freddy wasn't a good anything.

It needed to be made clear that he'd fought his wife, not just beat on her. She hit back. He wouldn't have married her if she wasn't the type to hit back. There was no real bragging about any of this, though. You bring your time up casually and somebody asks what charge you got fingered on and you say 'my wife panicked, thought she'd killed me, called the cops to confess, I got searched, arrested for possession, charged with assault, wife didn't press charges, wham bam thank you ma'am six months in county for the trouble of the phonecall'.

It was embarrassin'.

The story gets told, though, because Joseph Cabot cares about his boys and foots the attorney bill. By the time Eddie's heard the story second-hand and asked after the truth, Freddy can actually laugh a little at himself. By the time the topic rolls around the bar table and White gets to hear it, Freddy has turned the telling of it into a fine piece of entertainment.

He embellishes. He builds it up like this serious scary thing, like maybe he nearly killed his own wife or she was barefoot pregnant or something, that kinda bullshit. They know it's a joke and they know it's a half-fable and those that don't know either of these things are only so relieved at the absurdity of the truths that they laugh along too.

But Freddy really did see six months in county, and he really did split his own wife's face wide open during a fight about the water heater, and she really had nearly killed him with a fucking glass pitcher to the head, and there was nothing funny about that; nothing funny that four months into his sentence, she'd come around to tell him she had been pregnant and that's why she'd been so riled up (hormones yanno) but she decided to get rid of it because she didn't want to raise no kid in a house where the ma and the pa couldn't stop hitting each other.

He'd got on the program and she'd gone on the pill but that shit was expensive so she'd gone and got herself a job and probably a boyfriend (or a girlfriend, fuck, it was the nineties wasn't it?) and there was nothing funny about any of that, either.

So when the chuckles had all died down and the shovel-faced mouthy fucker began a crazy story of his own, the only other little guy in the group (and you're little if you're five-seven and don't have the means or the know-how to make yourself a fat fuck; in this business you gotta be mean if you can't be tall and hell this guy seemed plenty mean) - the other guy, anyway, he leans over like he knows what's what and he asks Freddy what really went down. Like he gives a fuck, or he'd maybe been therebefore.

Freddy just laughs it off, tired and worn. "You don't wanna know, and I wouldn't tell ya if you did.  _White_." A gentle reminder that nobody should be prying for any details.

* * *

White sat back in the booth, the group sprawling out as the rabbity-eyed Mr. Pink excused himself from Mr. Brown's absurdities to take a leak.

Larry could wield his compassion in the effort to unearth what details he could, though it usually took concentrated application. Orange's six months for possession and assault was a fish in a sea of thousands, especially if Mr. Orange wasn't offering any frame of time. Holdaway might have to go back years in the county records, because who knew if Orange's track marks were from dropping out of any programs or if it all really had been that recent.

White noticed the guy still wore his wedding ring, which somehow made the event feel distant; like any sane woman would have kicked him out on his ass for shit like that. But they could have made up over the course of months, or... There just weren't enough details to go by. It might not have even happened in California.

Couldn't ask too many questions, though. For obvious reasons.

White turned his attention back to Brown, Old Mr. Blue and Nice-Guy Eddie mumbling between themselves and scoffing between their beers and bullshitting between their sincerity. Eddie seemed as much of a lynchpin as Papa Joe, familiar with the individuals of the group where they weren't familiar with each other. Made White feel all the more like an interloper, like a transplant, like he had to work all the harder to get a few more stories out of these fellas.

The trick to being the cool motherfucker behind the smoking barrels, though, was not to try at all. Let the pigeons come to the bread crumbs. Answer questions like a smartass, but ask questions as sincerely as a brother. Don't tell bullshit stories - lying would only complicate the charade - but walk with the swagger those stories might belie.

The accent helped; it invoked Capone and The Godfather when most of L.A. sounded off to Scarface. It sparked imagination. Larry didn't have to punch a man to let him know he wouldn't like it, because it didn't matter how hard he could actually hit so long as he could let that man's imagination do all the work before it got to the actual point of violence.

The most prominent key to putting up a successful front, though, was body language.

Larry got in their space, threw his arms over the backs of booths or chairs, bumped elbows and bummed cigarettes. It was basic, it was instinct; and hell if every single human being what ever fell into a life of crime didn't have a surplus of basic instinct where their twentieth-century social acuity had failed them. He took note of who walked closer to whom, who trailed behind, who stayed to the left. Orange was a sentry, looking up and scanning the diner when everyone else paused in conversation to take their drinks. Pink not too far behind, sharp as a tack and genuinely intelligent (Larry would have to stay out of that guy's peripheral). When 'Toothpick' finally showed, he was assigned a color and White saw the entire group dynamic shift as visibly as the seating arrangements.

Orange sat a little straighter. Eddie had gotten up to hug the guy like they were kin or something (files said Nice Guy was an only child). Pink didn't meet anyone's eyes, clearly nervous. Blue nodded his respect, congratulated the guy like he was a war vet or some shit.

White crunched a piece of ice between his teeth, let it slide down his throat. Shook the man's hand. Maybe nobody else at that table had ever been to prison, the way they acted around him. That would make the investigation a bit trickier, if it were true.

Brown scooted over to invite the newly christened Mr. Blonde to have a seat, fearless or otherwise too self-absorbed to give a shit (sociopaths and egotists, most criminals). Mr. Blonde sidled in, easy and chuckling and generally pleased to be there. Larry studied the joker's face (literally, all sharp angles and teeth like a cartoon villain) but then let him fall to the background.

Nothing special about Blonde, except maybe the inside joke that had to do with the color he'd been assigned because his hair was black - the greaser image hadn't been too far off base, cowboy boots and bowling shirt and jeans tight enough to rekindle the waitress' interest in refilling their drinks. Prison had scared whatever resemblance to a toothpick this guy had ever had right out of his frame, which meant he was the big guy in the group, and every head would be turned cautiously his way when it wasn't following Nice-Guy's authority.

Which was good news, really, because it diverted any attention away from Larry. Watch the crooks when they were watching someone else. Diversion half the work of any magic trick. Pay no attention to the man behind the bloody curtain.

Hell, Blonde's arrival was damn near a blessing.

* * *

Larry was given an address and a time of day - Friday ten a.m. - and if he was surprised that any one of these crooks woke up before noon, he didn't show it. The main attraction, the big job, what would accumulate to hundreds of thousands (if not a solid mil) take; that was the main course and White wasn't allowed to skip the _hors d'ouevres_. Holdaway had warned him as much, and there was nothing Larry could do to keep his nose clean.

It would be his bad luck if he had to blow the whistle on the operation early to save someone's life during an aperitif, but apparently Mr. Orange favored the covert breaking-and-entering kind of robbery and less so the kind that took place in an alley at knife-point. (That was the value of bagging the Cabots at last - all the unsolved robberies in that town would be halved if not eradicated entirely.)

It was Orange to escort Larry on the warm-up job because it was Orange who Papa Joe considered a 'great judge of character', having selectively weeded the Cabot ranks of two stone-cold murderers and an undercover cop already. The report to Holdaway read that Orange was like a production company's handler, interviewing the actors and screening all the junk mail. You didn't get to Eddie or Joe without going through Orange. He was at once too busy 'handling' the others on the team but at a drop of a dime he'd square all his attention on White, nose wrinkling in a sneer of a grin.

White noticed it, the force of change. He let the bad attitude roll off him like waves beating at a sea cliff, shutting down to a silence with a raised eyebrow. He knew it was a ruse but didn't know if Larry the White Russian should be sharp enough to know it, too. Orange was an awful lot like Larry sometimes - like he couldn't help but crack a joke and make friendly and it was more fun than Larry should have had to make him slip up.

That was in a group, though, when pretenses had to be maintained. This job was going to be one-on-one, and Larry need only survive the dissection of those glassy green eyes for a little longer than an afternoon. How, for instance, had Orange known about the undercover detective Holdaway's people had sent the summer before? Larry had read the file, and either Detective Ferchetti had left something crucial out of his reports or the Cabots' attache really was that good.

Larry shoved all that anxiety to the bottom of his thoughts before he'd left his apartment, but the bus ride to the Valley had given him plenty of time to ruminate and work himself up again. He used that energy instead of trying to suppress it, harnessed the nervousness a casual drug dealer might feel shifting areas of expertise as he was.

Orange's house was, much to Larry's surprise, in a ritzy fukken neighborhood.

It only took the few blocks from bus stop to the address in his pocket for White to realize this wasn't Orange's house. It was the target. It was the assignment. Orange was already waiting for him inside; the front door gave way to reveal an open living room with its breezeway doors thrown wide. Orange was perched on the back of the bright red leather couch, petting a hulking rottweiler with its broad head in his lap (drooling all over the hole at his knee, staining the denim dark).

Orange greeted White with a bored smile.  "Well, you're not late."

"Jesus fucking christ, I thought we were meeting at your place first."

Orange shrugged under the bulk of a tan wool trench-coat he'd probably already liberated from the closets (judging by its ill fit). "You've obviously been away a long fucking time, if you're gonna forget what streets belong to which neighborhoods."

"I was just a kid when I left L.A.!"

Orange winced, calming the dog at his knee. "Keep it down, will ya? The neighbors know this couple is away to Mexico for the month and I don't want the dog sitter coming over early 'cos she heard your fine dulcetto." He easily and nimbly left the couch, the dog's bulk spilling after him with an excited huff. Larry edged back to the door.

"You afraid of dogs, new guy?"

"Ask me that question again after you've had yourself a rabies shot. It goes in the stomach, up to ten fucking needles."

Orange drew up, glancing down uncertainly at the animal as it drowsily inspected the warm breeze drifting through the room. "It ain't rabid." He patted its heavy ribs as if to reassure it. "But it can smell your fear. People aren't so very different than animals, you know. Even if you can school your expression and your words to model confidence, there's no hiding the stink of fear."

"Thanks for the advice, Doctor Doolittle. Can we get going on this job before the dogsitter pokes her dumb head in?"

Orange scratched his cheek in thought, tilting his chin from side to side. "Okay, sure. So what are you gonna go for first?"

"The doorknob," White gruffed impatiently. "To wipe my prints." He exampled this, pulling a dark handkerchief from his trouser pocket.

"Okay. Then what." Orange shrugged deeper into his coat and was idly playing footsie with the rottweiler, careful not to let the teeth scrape up his shoes too bad.

"You cold or somethin'?"

"Just withdrawals. I'll be sweating like a motherfucker in an hour or so."

White nodded, sage about all things related to illicit substance. "You on that Program?" He inspected the house, peeking into corridors and fingering windowsills for the deactivated alarm wires.

"Methadone." It was like a curse word, and both men winced. Orange had his hands balled into the coat's pockets. "What are you gonna go for first, c'mon, I'm curious over here." He bounced in place, impatient.

Instead of answering, "You get a haircut?"

Orange rolled his eyes, fixing a cigarette to his mouth without lighting it. "Gotta look professional for the heist. Not gonna have any masks, so might as well leave behind a pretty security tape."

"Really?" Larry bent to the fireplace, running his hands under the brick sill for hidden valuables. He found a spare set of keys but not much else. "No masks, huh. What are we robbing, a bank?"

"Jewelry store." Orange paced to the breezeway and fidgeted with the cigarette he's not allowed to light. The dog wandered over to inspect White's progress, pulling anxiety sharp to the forefront.

White just knew the damn thing was going to snap into his face without warning, and he trailed around to the kitchen just to escape it. There was nothing valuable he could see making away with; the decorations were cheap crystal and the appliances couldn't be taken on a bus to a pawn shop in broad daylight. He disappeared to the bedroom and rifled carefully for jewelry or heirlooms. Turned the mattress over and remade the bed.

By the time White was working on the bookshelves, Orange had moseyed around to poke questions through the air. "So what are you looking for?"

"Money tucked away for a rainy day. Hidden things. I think the keys in the fireplace go to a boat, or maybe a vacation home, or maybe this home. Unless there's a car in the garage."

Orange nodded. "We're driving it out of here; keys would be a big help. Got anything else?"

"Unless we're going to pack the appliances into the trunk of that car, I'd say this go is a bust."

Orange scratched his chin in thought again, trailing his thumbnail up and down the curve of his jaw. "That's a thought. Too many serial numbers to file away, though. So what made you toss the bed?"

White's insides froze. Maybe that's where Ferchetti had messed up, maybe he'd been too familiar with the ways of the criminal mind, too easily slipping into the detective's habit of covering every inch. "Well I figure," The lie came easy, as much a relief as the breeze through the curtains. "Nice big house, nice neighborhood, cheap ass flea market shit on the walls? Kujo over here wearing a rusty ass chain insteada something studded with rhinestones? New money. Maybe even drug money. Anything of value, it's gonna be hidden."

But then again, White was being too smart. There was a pause between Orange and White and, for a second, Larry actually doubted himself. He couldn't be too bad at the job, or else they wouldn't be able to rely on him for the big heist. He couldn't be too good, either, or they'd suspect something. If Larry's weakness wasn't compassion, it'd be ego. Holdaway was right; Larry needed to stop showing off. He shrugged like he couldn't give a fuck. "Unless it's just that you already picked the place clean."

Orange grinned, "I'm glad you'd think so, but nah. I suppose the car's the only thing we're going to net this time around, unless you're in the market for a new pet." He clapped White's shoulder and earned a playful shove, the dog letting out a few nervous half-yelps at the semi-violence. "Lookit you! Such a good nanny," Orange cooed, peeling the baggy of dog treats from his pocket before upending them on the carpet.

They leave the house unlocked and breezy and maybe even a little cleaner than they found it. The keys weren't a match, though, so Orange had to hot-wire their getaway mobile while White pried the garage door open. White approached the passenger side dusting his hands, knocking against the window. Orange struggled up into view, clearly annoyed, and rolled his eyes before punching at the door lock.

White slid into the seat, whistling low at that new car smell. New money, and not even a revolver taped under the dash. Orange got the car started with an asthmatic cough of the engine, sliding upright. He drove like he walked, slumped in the chair with an arm thrown out over the wheel, glancing up at the rearview instead of twisting in his seat to check the road.

White figured there was a need for conversation between them, but he wasn't about to babble on about bullshit. Never did like small talk, unless he was flirting with someone, and hey wasn't _that_  a great idea. He chuckled out at the passing road, arm hanging out of the open widow.

"What's funny?"

"Dangerous ideas; sometimes I get 'em in my head and it's a trip just to consider."

"Oh yeah? Thinking about what you would have called that dog, if you'd taken her home?"

"Something dainty and misleading, like Tutu."

Orange cracked a wide grin and White felt like he could relax. "You familiar with Donny's Garage?"

"Nope."

"Chop shop. We might get a little shit for the transaction, but I wanna make sure the price is fair. New cars, man they're hardest to ply off 'cos the insurance companies get a right bug up their collective asses. Donny don't usually do new cars." Orange trailed off suggestively. "I wanna see you convince him otherwise."

"What, like a salesman?" White's stomach had gone cold. He might end up hurting somebody after all.

"No, like a badass motherfucker. Like Baretta."

White paused. Fished his memory for any mistakes he might have made up to that point. "You mean like Mr. Nicholas, right? Baretta was the cop of that show."

Orange laughed. "I'm just glad you got that reference, man. You watch a lot of T.V.? Most stoners do, I find."

"Not a stoner," White wheedled, "But yeah I had a lot of free time doing what I did."

"You're not doing it anymore, huh?" Orange had shrugged out of his coat, pallid forehead shined in sweat.

"Even if I were, I never knew any rich white ladies and I didn't like to go skiing on fresh snow." He sounded petulant, and strained not to be so uppity. Even Mr. White Russian had standards, though.

"What, you a naturalist? Nothin' but pot and peyote?"

White chewed over that image, nodding from side to side. "Yeah, I guess I was. I'd got into coke one winter but that's a messy fucking scene. Colombians, eesh." He could feel the baseball bat in his chapped hands, the carpetbag at his ankle, the ice seeping up the hem of his fitted trousers. That scene crept its way into his voice and he felt fuller in that car. Realer.

Orange was nodding, accepting, eyes glued to the road. "Hit the radio, will you?"

* * *

There was a certain unevolved element White had observed amongst most criminals. These were the people who had slipped through the cracks of the educational system; sociopathy a marked lack of intelligence, and what smart ones there were, were almost always psychopaths. It stood to reason, then, that if you were on the wrong side of the Law you were either stupid or insane.

Sure, some decent people found themselves in bad situations and couldn't help but grow up to be products of their environment, but this hardly lasted past a certain mile marker of adulthood.  Early twenties usually saw the decent ones at a steady job, with a family or enrolled in a correctional program. That was what the legal system was for, to put the mentally and emotionally stable ones back on their feet. As it was, the seasoned crooks were just... stuck in place. The people who stole and hurt just to make gain never grew out of a certain phase of their lives and the signs were very, very obvious.

Sometimes the signs were absurd and surreal, like the hardest motherfucker ever to prowl the streets might still sleep with a teddy bear, or that guy who knocked a granny's face in for her purse still buys his mother flowers on her birthday (there was nothing juvenile about being kind to your ma, but the contrast was still ridiculous). Or maybe a seasoned crook like Orange still collected comic books because regular books and magazines couldn't hold his attention - and there it was, and there it wasn't, because Orange wasn't dumb.

Which meant he might have been psychotic, or he might have been one of those unfortunate products of an impoverished upbringing that saw him clinging on to that survival attitude as long as humanly possible. The plain fact was that criminals never grew up. Maybe they took such delight in their jobs that it seemed like they never could grow up, or at least they never had to, because being miserable with your job was the American stamp of adulthood and if Orange was ever miserable with his job then he could simply get around to doing something else, couldn't he?

So there was that ridiculous scene, Orange slumped in the front seat of the car he'd just stolen flipping through the comic book he'd picked up when White had disappeared to buy cigarettes. He'd probably stolen the comic, too, but White knew better than to ask. There was a dual philosophy circling White's thoughts on the subject; was it that criminals were stuck in the selfish throes of a second childhood, or was that just what unhappy stiffs with miserable jobs told themselves because they only wished they could indulge their Id with such abandon?

Root instinct and juvenile behavior weren't so very far apart, after all. Was crime a result of developmental arrest, then, or just a matter of circumstance providing opportunity to wield a state of mind with which every man and woman was born? Larry had a difficult time picturing Orange as anything but a criminal. He knew the ubernerdy manchildren that took over their parents' basements well into their forties and not a one of those guys ever got around to wearing a wedding ring. So you take a nerd, grow him up in a rough neighborhood, and parental neglect makes him enough of a badass to net himself a wife?

"You're thinking too loud," Orange complained, folding the comic into the pocket of his new out-of-season coat. "Steam comin' outta your ears." He bent awkwardly to refit the wiring under the steering wheel and the car jerked to life.

White growled a non-answer, ashing his cigarette out the window. It was all just conjecture anyway, nothing solid to go into any reports. This Donny guy, though, that garage was going to be a place of mighty interest to the boys in blue.

"Relax," Orange's reassurance was a bit startling, as was his acuity. Definitely not one of the dumb ones. "Donny's not a bad guy, he just thinks he's cleverer than he really is. You know the type?"

White's laugh hardly left his throat. "The kind that say 'commode' when 'restroom' would do?"

Orange's eyebrows leapt to his hairline. "Naw, them's just the wordsy kind that maybe watch a few too many crime noire flicks. I mean the real jokers, the ones that deal in finance. Like numbers being solid somehow makes them wieldable, weaponized."

Diplomatically, "Are Donny's numbers solid?"

"Not hardly half. It's an unstable market, is stolen cars. Supply and demand, what parts go where and get sold to whom." Orange tilted his head from side to side, face as animated as any sincere businessman. "I don't claim to be an expert on the topic but I know we don't deserve to get screwed outta our rightful take. This car is brand fucking new which means the parts are brand fucking new which means Donny and his boys are going to be able to sell off every single bit of it. If he's gonna wanna pay us like this is just some heap we rolled in from the junkyard -"

"I get it," White nodded. "So how much does a brand new car cost, in parts?"

"Exactly a third of what it costs once it's put together and shown off on a Lot, maybe a little less because I mean," Orange paused to take the left turn onto the highway. "I mean, you know, either way we're netting a profit. And we don't wanna bankrupt our grift, that's just bad manners."

"All right," White contemplated the cherry of his cigarette. "So how much does a Lot vehicle go for, then?"

Orange glanced sharply from the road to White and back again twice. "What, you don't know?"

"I'm from -" White cut himself off, illustrating compliance to Papa Joe's demands about personal information (though he'd have to start leaking tidbits soon if he wanted the kind of rapport that earned Orange's trust). "- a big city, cowpoke. We have these things a lot like trains, only they run underground."

Orange laughed, suspicion diffused. "Okay, fuck you then. Useless." It was one of those good-natured insults, one that almost had Larry reaching over and punching the guy in the arm. He caught himself, fist raised between them, let his hand fall back to the padded armrest. Orange cleared his throat as if to announce an Emmy winner. "A wood-paneled Cadillac of this make and model goes for around thirty smacking big ones... or a little more."

White nodded. Orange wasn't going to tell him the asking price, or how to haggle with Donny. That was for White to figure out, and he understood the thinking-on-your-feet aspect of this job. It wasn't about being an amateur at grift and barter; it was about being a professional under an unfamiliar circumstance. White could respect that, find enthusiasm for it even.

They walked away from Donny's garage with seven thousand in cold cash, and Orange called White a pussy and Donny a cheapskate but he did so with his arm around White's neck and his knuckles in his hair and he only relented once the bus showed up and White chased him down the seat aisle like he was the kid who had just stolen his comic book. They remembered they were adults once they reached the back of the bus and composed themselves to a seat, Orange ever-vigilant and White with an elbow propped on the narrow sill of the window, hand covering his grin.

* * *

Seven thou in take-away was cause for celebration. After the Cabots' cut, Orange had five grand to split between them; and he insisted, because how else was White going to pay his rent and eat? Cars were usually a lot harder to get away with in that either their alarms were set or their owners would notice the theft right away.  They'd lucked out finding one left in a garage by happenstance of vacation, though White never doubted Orange having done his homework weeks beforehand.

Two and a half K to go into the evidence vault until the end of the trial, and then the city would absorb it and spread it out like rain. A penny to everyone.

That didn't stop White from celebrating with the rest of the boys, hardly denting the allowance the L.A. precinct had siphoned for 'illicit transactions'. The paperwork on undercover expenditures was a nightmare. Did hookers and blow go under utility and grocery? Was booze a miscellaneous or an extraneous? None of it was Larry's money.

If it were Larry's money, he'd forego the blow and buy Orange a nice Philly style steak, nothing like the dry anemic slabs ground up for chilli meat hereabouts.  It was a heartbeat later that White realized wanting to take the guy out for steak was a little too... something.  Stupid.  Gay.  A little too much like a waste of time.  He had to work on the other suspects, maybe catch what info slipped out between the cursing and the cat-calling.

Nothing doing.  These joeys were professional bullshitters and breeze-shooters, pool sharkers and sweet-talkers.  The dive was crowded - and it was a dive, windowless and half a floor underground, hot and damp and full to pressing elbows from brick wall to brick wall.  Men and women lost their shirts on the dance floor, a bare tit disappeared behind a large ringed hand, and by the time the knife-fight broke out Orange had already seized Eddie's elbow and steered him toward the back exit.

The rest of the boys followed piecemeal, Blonde enigmatic and unaffected at Eddie's side while Pink and Brown hassled Blue into letting his 'date' get back to serving the drinks so they could get the fuck out of there before the cops showed up.  White lent a shoulder to keeping Pink away from the curb; Pink had hit the juice pretty hard claiming it made him ace at pool, shooting in 'an altered state of consciousness with ninja-like precision'. Or some shit.

Pink was rambling fairly vehemently about the power of the subconscious and how shooting (pool, or) a rifle was a lot like playing the piano and that it's all about breathing and making your body a tripod.  On and on, until it came down to what Larry wanted to hear, to some fatal bragging point, and that was Mr. Pink's Hawkeye medal.  Scrawny rat fuck had been in the military, though it was no large guess to see why he'd dropped out.

Cadets, drop-outs, retirees, Pink was too young to be a veteran but Larry would bet balls to bullseye that he had a father who was.  It would still be a long search, but Larry now had a face and a general time frame and the government was anything if not exact in its record keeping.  Larry damn near wished he wasn't in blackout; he'd have loved to see Holdaway's face, deliver the news himself.  He'd type the report up tonight, even, alcohol burning through his veins like potent lamp oil.

The group managed to herd Pink into a cab and stood outside it while the cabby peeked nervously at the street, arguing who (if anyone) should maybe go with Mr. Pink and make sure he didn't pass out in any compromisable places.  White feigned reluctance but volunteered, keen on getting an address to feed to the file search.  He climbed in, bracing Pink upright against the far door.

White slapped at Pink's hollow face to rouse him, shaking the man by his lapels to get the address out of him.  This gained (a Hills hotel, double damn he was rich and from out-of-town), White repeated the destination but still the cab did not pull forward.  He was still quite drunk, so it took asking after the hold-up twice before the cabby could understand him, but by then Orange had thrown a wad of cash through the driver's window and shoved in after White to shepard them both safely returned.

They were all too drunk to care at the proximity, having just come from a dive where strangers had their elbows in intimate places. Squashing up next to a guy you even sorta had to consider a friend was no big deal compared to that, though Pink fidgeted and quoted a 'personal neuroses with enclosed spaces'.  White had to agree that the L.A. heat, even diffused by nightfall, made the experience less pleasant.

White had been half-assing to reassure Mr. Pink, and the cab had finally pulled out with a lurch, and on taking inventory of his surroundings White found Orange sitting forward with an arm against the plexiglass, but more importantly (and that his thoughts ran like this, without punctuation, mouth running on auto-pilot to keep Pink engaged in conversation so as to keep him awake), but, more importantly, on meeting Orange's expression and expecting to find the usual mocking sneer or the more popular calm disinterest,

 _At that point,_ in that cab, pressed in the middle seat between Pink's gangly sprawl (and, on second thought, avoiding that and finding himself more on Orange's half of the car and maybe that was-) laughing because jesus h. christ Pink was soaked and Orange's grin crooked up half his face like maybe he didn't want it to but couldn't stop it really, hell White was a funny guy when he was annoyed, and

And did you see that guy with the knife? What the hell, way to ruin an evening, all fun and games until somebody loses a spleen, and Orange really did laugh at that and what, did Orange think White was going to rob Pink, what was with the escort?

Did White say that out loud? He didn't mean to, really, because what he'd really wanted to ask was, was it hot in California, or was it just Orange. That question went unasked, for obvious reasons (chief not White's personal safety but in fact how cheesy a line it was), but it was there again, the thing that had derailed Larry's thoughts in the first place. Orange was braced against the plexiglass, half his attention to the road.

When that attention shifted, Christ, White could swear he felt himself being bottomed out like a canoe struck by lighting. Burning and drowning at the same time. Elbows in intimate places, body language. Check your damn body language, White. Arm thrown out over the back of Orange's half of the seat.

White nearly removed his arm, realizing it had been there all along and maybe why Orange hadn't sat back properly and maybe buckled his fucking belt (none of them had or would), but

The cab took a sharp turn and the Hills were a good forty minutes away and Orange settled back in his seat with boneless inebriation and his hair was damp against White's forearm until

There was a turn and White shifted to get comfortable in the silence left behind in the wake of Pink's blackout. Orange's head fit in the crook of White's shoulder as if it wasn't too hot in there at all, but maybe

The lights of the underpass painted Orange's face in stark claps of industrial yellow neon and he squinted, blinking up from the doze before hiding his eyes against Larry's neck. Against White's neck. Against the neck of some midwest gangster he didn't know from Tom Mick or Harry, and Micky didn't once drop character because sometimes crooks weren't stupid or crazy but they could be queer if they were neither or both of these, or maybe they had bad tempers or just bad luck and it found them six months in county and

The cabby pulled to the back of the hotel and White chuckled encouragement as he shook Orange and Pink awake. The night was a lot cooler by the time they got Pink propped up between them (and that was why Orange had gone, at the behest of Nice Guy that Pink not come down with something as disastrous as a concussion when White inevitably dropped his talkative ass down a flight of stairs).

There weren't any stairs in the hotel, a ranch-style joint set in the scenic rock like a mudslide disaster waiting to happen (where White was from, it rained, okay? Orange found this hilarious). Hotel key fished out of Pink's pocket (a game of rock-paper-scissors determining who would brave that venture), Orange snapped an impatient question as White made sure Pink was laid out on his bed without the danger of drowning in his own puke.

White didn't understand the sudden change in attitude until he saw the credit card, and even in the cold AC of the carpeted hallway he hardly registered what the point was of breaking into an unoccupied hotel room, but

Orange had a grip on the hem of White's Hawaiian shirt, and White followed this tug because he was drunk and victorious and couldn't take his eyes off Orange's sharp grin from day one and Orange was an observant fuck and if he never found Larry out for a cop he sure as hell found him out for something else, and hell if -

Larry knew it was a bad idea even before the chemical tang of cocaine bloomed from Orange's mouth to his, bitter and distinct. He startled from the kiss, the light from the hallway closed out as his back hit the door. Too drunk. Too stupid. Too damn dark in there.

"Hey," Orange soothed, the heavy fold of a leather jacket hitting the floor. "Relax man, I'm not gonna jump you." White got a little warning this time, Orange's bony hands searching out his shoulders, the jumping pulse in his neck, then combing through his hair. Orange pushed White back up against the closed door, and kissed like they had just got back from Prom, like White's mouth was the most fascinating thing in the known world.

White had anchored his grip at Orange's sides, cementing the image of slow dancing in a highschool gym. Taffeta on the basketball hoops and barbiturates in the punch.  The door against his back was flat and cold, and the floor under his feet dipped and swayed like they were on the ocean, because Larry was drunk.

Orange slid and arm around White's neck to pull himself closer, shoulders to knees keeping out the dark chill settled raw on damp skin. "What," he complained when White braced their bodies apart. "What, what," he mouthed against White's ear like he knew it would drive him crazy, as sure as if he'd read it on a file. "I'm clean, you asshole - certificate of health in my wallet. Right next to the condoms."

"Good to know," White hadn't trusted his voice to work, especially at the next reluctant admission, "So you're clean, but you're also fucked up."

"Jury's out on that." Orange mused, though he had given White some space. Hotel curtains were a heavy barricade against outside light and noise, and either Orange didn't want to risk a lamp or simply didn't have the patience to go hunting for one.  Maybe it was dark for a good reason.

Maybe Larry didn't want to go hunting out a lamp either. "I mean you're high. You didn't even ask me if  _I_  was clean."

Orange's hands did noise to the door on both sides of White's head, slapping the wood before pushing himself away. "So tell me you're clean, then."

Larry could think a little clearer without the smell of sweat and leather crawling down his throat.  "You're married."

Orange scoffed. "I'm not asking you to wear my class ring, Suzie Q, I just wanna suck your cock."

White was sharply surprised that they'd been thinking along the same lines; that this encounter was a little too... something. Too new. Too intimate. The kind of rendezvous teenagers would have, because they knew it wouldn't last past the summer but they were drunk and self-centered and delusional on hormones. "I'm flattered."

"Yeah. You're somethin'."

"I'm also shitfaced. Nothin' doin', friend, sorry."

"You're sober enough."

White crossed his arms, leaned his head against the door. Kept trying to swallow back the aftertaste of the crack rock Orange had probably been dissolving under his lip all night, wondering if it was enough to show up on a blood test.  Wondering if it was enough to get him addicted.  "Maybe.  But you're still married."

"For the tax returns."

"I got a code. I got standards."

"'Course you do." Orange sounded less manic, at least, but the defeat echoed between them.  The repeated spark of a butane lighter, a small weak pocket of light where Orange wore his hair ruffled and boyish, disappearing as the cigarette was breathed to life. Footfall in the dark, the healthy noiselessness of a new mattress giving way under a body.

White stepped forward because he couldn't just leave it god damn well enough alone. He was unsurprised when he felt the tug of his beltloop, knees hitting the edge of the bed.

"You nightblind?"

White meant to laugh, he just didn't get around to it. "No, but your pupils are probably blown so wide I bet it's given you super vision."

"Faster than a speeding bullet..." Orange mumbled, managed to coax White to take a sit. His voice lowered dramatically. "Able to leap to erroneous conclusions in a single bound."

"Listen to the Harvard grad over here. Erroneous."

"I got that word from Ghostbusters."

White's eyes were glued to the burning cherry of Orange's cigarette. "Dan Aykroyd is a trip."

Orange made an agreement in the back of his throat. "And Billy-what's-his-face."

"Crystal?  He ain't in that film."

"Sure he is, he plays Peter."

White's silent laugh shook the bed, Orange's heat soaking his hip. "You mean - aw fuck, what's his name..."

"Yeah you're right though, it ain't Billy Crystal."

"Not even close.  Budge over, I gotta let the room stop spinning."

Orange made space, but not much.  They fit together like they had at the door, like they did in the cab, inebriated and lazy, and Larry waxed philosophical. "Chinese saying goes something like, a hundred years, shit, what was it - a hundred years in a boat -"

"It takes a hundred years for two people to share the same boat, a thousand years for them to share the same pillow. Fortune cookie."

"Bill Murray."

"Bill Murray ain't chi- oh, that's the guy."

"Yeah, Peter Spengler."

"No, wait, no," Orange twisted in place, settling back so he could rest his head in the crook of White's shoulder. "You got the characters confused. Spengler's the geeky one."

"Oh yeah, the Jew. There was a Jew and a black guy and Peter was the goofy stud who wanted to get with Sigourney Weaver. Who was the other nerd?"

"Rick Moranis?"

"Naw, naw, there was four of 'em, four Ghostbusters."

"That's plenty true, but people don't usually credit Ernie Hudson 'cos Winston was a late arrival to the team."

White plucked Orange's smoke from his hand and took a bracing pull. He exhaled, wondering if this was building the kind of rapport he needed to be building and not some other, more dangerous set-up. "That's all Greek to me. I just know there were four of 'em and Rick Moranis was the only nerd who actually got to tap himself some demonic ass."

Orange's answer was a smile evident in the huff of his breath, his knuckles tapping out a steady rhythm on White's chest. Orange could almost sleep, if he weren't metabolizing an unstable upper.

White himself felt halfway to passing out, body leaden in the swaying embrace of still-a-little-too-drunk. He probably wouldn't have gotten to his report that night anyway.

Orange's voice was stark. "Lemme jerk you off."

White winced. "Maybe later, when we aren't talking about the Ghostbusters."

Orange's snicker was stifled. "Squeamish over a little ectoplasm?"

"Dan Aykroyd's doofy mug would haunt my fucking nightmares."

Low, deadpan - "It's the Staypuff marshmallow man."

The resulting scuffle saw them from one side of the bed to the other. A shove here or there, a jab to the ribs, Orange cursing at minimal volume and White biting down on his laughter. The hindsight of sobriety, since the noise would have been equal if not greater had they actually been fucking. Unless Orange was used to this, to keeping it quiet, to doing this shit on the sly.

"Heya, White..."

Larry realized he'd been caught up in his thoughts and lets his fists loose from Orange's shirt. "Hn?"

"You AC/DC?"

This time White  _did_  laugh, a sharp 'ha' that he repeated for emphasis. "Think maybe you should ask that  _before_  you pull a drunk man into a hotel room? Some guys out there, beat you half to death for pulling a stunt like that on the wrong impression."

"Yeah, no, yeah, I mean, you like women?"

"If they're nice enough, yeah." Slightly annoyed, White didn't bother to ask why Orange had been so confident over whether or not he liked men.

"Wanna go pick one up?"

"Jesus Christ, you trying to kill yourself?"

"What, hey, naw," Orange struggled to a sit, the dent of his weight pulling Larry toward the middle of the bed. "Nothing or nobody from the Boulevard. I know a decent place, though, they vet. Just wanna get laid, yanno," A sniff, "Get the base outta my veins."

White tried to shrug back into the warm spot of the coverlet. "So go get laid." A tension pulled into the pause like maybe Orange was going to ask him for money, but then -

"Nevermind then, if you ain't interested."

White's laugh was stained by disbelief. "What the fuck does that even matter?" Before he could stop himself, "Why?"

White's eyes have adjusted to the gloom, and he can barely make out the dip of Orange's shoulders as he waffles in indecision. "Long story, or short?"

"Crissakes, asshole. Short."

"I want to see your dick."

"... Okay. So what's the long story?"

"If I'm lucky? Your dick."

"Hardy fucking har."

"That's the idea."

"You wanna get smacked?"

"Okay. Sure. I can be into that."

"Orange. Enough wise-assing. What's the deal here? What's the matter with you?"

"I don't want you on the team."

Larry's pulse thundered through his ears. He sat up. "Did I ever, once,  _ever_  fuck up or screw you over or make Papa Joe look bad? Huh?  _Did I_?"

"No, man, and it ain't anything like Quid Pro Quo over here, believe me, it's just. Jesus. You're good. You'd make a good thief. The Cabots, man, they need guys like you. This job," he exhaled. "We aren't wearing any masks. That's gotta tell you something. We aren't even using our real names. The only safe way anybody could conceivably move that much ice through the market is anonymously, right?"

"Sure, I follow."

"So, Joe gets his cut once we make the sell. By ourselves. Individually. Preferably a few borders apart from California, and I don't mean state-wise."

"... So?"

"So I don't think you should be on this job. Most of the guys on the team have plans to get far, far away from the states. Do something else with their lives, maybe. But you're good at this line of work and it just feels like you only just got here to just. I dunno. I'm high."

"What happens if the guys don't or can't make the sell, or somehow Joe Cabot doesn't get his share?"

"He knows the buyers. They take the share right at the transaction. We're just the middle-men, the splash page, some faces the media can point the blame at."

"Yeah okay. I get it."

"You're gonna hear all this when Joe calls you around."

"If I get the job."

Orange fell back to the mattress. "Man, don't even listen to me. You're great. You'll do great." His legs found their way over White's lap, feet wagging off the side of the bed. "Wallet's in my jacket, if you want to have a look at that bloodwork sheet."

Larry's chest pinched in tight. He could have a look, and get Orange's name as easy as that. His hesitation was snapped up in the jaws of Orange's tireless observation, though, and the moment passed - Orange removed himself from Larry, from the bed, fished around the floor for his jacket. Pulled it on.

Larry couldn't have read much of anything in the dark, anyway. 


	4. Tomorrow Comes Today

Larry spent the next three days in his apartment, painting when he wasn't typing, working his hands to keep his mind busy. That had been a close fucking call with Orange, and if he ever sat down and thought it over he'd have to admit that he'd done the wrong thing in letting that name get away from him.

Larry was a good cop, he really was, he knew to which side of the law he pledged his loyalty. Orange was on the other side of that, the wrong side. Maybe prison would be good for him. Straighten him out. Get him off all that dope. Maybe he'd be one of the success stories, or get a cut in his sentence for cooperation.

Any other scenario didn't bear thinking about - and the fact that it was such an issue had White reeling.

Larry woke up the third day in a hard sweat, stumbling into the bathroom to jerk himself off and start up a tepid shower. His line of work wasn't bad guys versus the good guys; it never was and it never had been. It was just those who, for whatever reason, chose to do wrong by others, versus the guys who stood up and doled out the consequences of doing said wrong.

Hell, Micky couldn't count on one hand the number of cops who would call themselves 'good guys'. You shoot someone down in cold blood - doesn't matter if they'd knocked your own mother's teeth in for a penny - you were a murderer. The Police force of any city was just another kind of gang, after all; a bit more educated and better funded, keeping all the uncivilized crooks out of their territory.

Micky, Larry, the guy who was the son of Minerva and Haverd Dimmick, he accepted that. But all that taking a bullet for your partner bullshit, that was just media hype. Soldiers took bullets for each other. Firemen ran into burning buildings. Cops took bribes and ran into doughnut shops. Cops got up in riot gear and beat on hippies and shot students.

Cops made other people trust them, and then got them killed.

The shower tap was wrenched shut, Larry blinking the water out of his eyes before shaking his head like a wet dog. Orange was just some guy. Just some crook, some thief with a nice smile. There were dozens just like him and there would be dozens more to follow once he was locked up. Another junkie. Another wife-beater. Another manic Hollywood queer.

The phone rang with Larry halfway into his shirt, and he plucked it from its cradle before tugging his shirt down. "Speak."

"Uh. Woof-woof." Orange's smoky drawl curled into Larry's ear and Larry deflated. "Rudest greeting ever, seriously."

"How'd you get this number?" Wincing, because maybe that was something a cop would say. Drug dealers were allowed to be paranoid, weren't they?

"Why don't you say something like, hello, or White residence, or something nice like that?"

"Hello. My last name ain't actually White. What are you calling for, Orange?"

"Sheesh. Have your coffee yet? A week ago you'd have been leaping up the Queen's skirt for this phonecall."

"So where do I need to be."

"Hey," A shuffle, a rise in volume like Orange was leaning the phone closer to his face. "Chill the fuck out. I'm sorry, okay? I apologize for the other night. We gotta keep things on the level, you know, for the job."

Larry squeezed his eyes shut, exhaling slowly. "It's not that. We're cool, you and I."

"Rough night?"

"Bad dreams." If asked, Larry would have argued that you had to earn trust by being trustworthy. But really he'd made a slip. Mornings were not good for his mental faculties. "Got my fair share of baggage brought over from the east side. Don't worry about it."

"Okay." Orange's voice perked. "You know that class joint Papa Joe had you at? DiNicio's?"

"When you were late. Yeah."

There was a pause where maybe Orange was smiling. When his voice returned, it was close again and low. "You couldn't take your eyes off my mouth. I didn't know if you wanted to fight me or fuck me."

Larry's stomach dropped. "I'll solve the mystery for you, then. I wanted to cave your skull in for that haircut crack."

"Yeah but you were pretty damn forgiving by the end of the night."

"Your cheap fukken cigarillo gave me a headache."

A rasp of a laugh. "You were just jealous."

White held the question in the back of his throat, eyebrows drawing down.

"You know," Orange's grin could be heard. "Because that cigar got to spend all night getting sucked off."

"Oh, Jesus," White's exasperation battled Orange's laughter. They were flirting, plain and simple, and Larry didn't know if he could be okay with that or not. "Just tell me when I need to get there."

"Tomorrow. Early. I'll treat you to dinner."

"I can buy my own damn din-" but the line had already gone dead. Larry hung the phone back in its cradle with two fingers, mulling over what criminals ever did concerning sexual harassment complaints in the workplace. Did they have an HR, or...?

* * *

DiNicio's was fairly empty on a Wednesday night, Orange alone at a corner table in jeans and an open flannel revealing a blue Fantastic Four t-shirt.

"You ever dress like anything other than a punk?" White sat down and waved the host away when offered a menu. He ordered them both a Philly steak, or as close to it as could be rummaged up from this damn desert, and the host left with a new sheen of sweat to his high forehead.

"What," Orange had watched the transaction with raised eyebrows, and now aimed his incredulity at White. "As opposed to dressing like some cut-throat money lender?"

White tugged at his vest. "Pinstripes make a man look taller, you know."

"You look like a grandpa."

"You look like a pizza guy."

Orange leaned back, scrutinized White over the lighting of a cigarette. "What are you anyway, twenty five?"

"Twenty eight. What are you, fourteen?"

Orange scratched his jaw, cracked a brief grin. "Thirty two."

"All them chemicals. Preserving you like so much formaldehyde."

Orange ashed his cigarette, sucked at his front teeth like he'd never considered his looks before. "It's the nose, I guess. Like I ain't grown into it yet."

"I think it's the eyes."

Orange faltered in reaching for his water glass, glancing up at White before proceeding to take a sip.

"What? You got big eyes. Like this is news?"

"Yeah, I mean no; it's just that sometimes half the stuff out of your mouth is like you're finishing my sentences, only I haven't actually said any fucking thing. I mean, that's what makes you look like you're about ready to pull Capone on somebody's ass. Your fuckin' eyes, man." Orange shook his head, swirling the water in its glass like he was aerating wine.

White's smile was controlled, smug. "Not the pinstripes?"

"Those help."

"Think I might go out and buy a fedora later," White baited. "Know any good haberdasheries 'round this town?"

Orange slammed a hand on the table, making the silverware jump. He chewed the inside of his cheek, grin caught under a glare.

"What?" White matched Orange's dissection with a scowl. "What? Orange, godammit, what'd I say?"

After a heartbeat, Orange composed himself. Sat straighter, rearranged the silverware. "I'll tell you later." He picked a fork up, twirled it, set it back down. "When we aren't in public."

White relaxed. "Pervert. Weirdo."

"See," Orange was shaking his head. "It's like you can read my mind or somethin'."

* * *

The first real snare in the case had Larry meeting Holdaway at a midnight truck stop. Holdaway was dressed for undercover, fatigues and a muscle shirt showing off his beer belly. Larry couldn't even muster the levity to crack a grin, and they ducked into the lobby of the weigh station as if for an illicit transaction. Which, on some level, this was.

"Talk to me."

Larry took a hard sit on the cement partition. "Our boys answer any civilian calls for any found bodies?"

"About three every month. Why?"

"One of those is going to be my fault."

Holdaway took a breath. "Anybody society is going to miss?"

"Don't give me that shit, Jim, not now. His mother's gonna miss him, how about that? Even pimps and thieves got families."

"Right, right," Holdaway had his hands up, trying to keep his partner cool. "Let's get this figured out, then. Who was it?"

"I don't know, some guy had an issue with one of Eddie's boys. Eddie goes on this errand and a few of us tag along so he can pay the man and get the matter settled. Some fist fight what happened ages ago, involving I don't even fucking know who; somebody's brother got hospitalized and died from complications. The usual streeter bullshit, yanno?"

Holdaway nodded. "Question two. Were you the one who shot him?"

Larry shrugged one shoulder after the other, like he couldn't shake the memory. "No."

"Then how is this in any way your fault?"

"I clubbed him to death with a pipe."

Holdaway jerked back like he'd been struck. He paced down and away, returning in a slow circle, thinking, eyes glued to the cement. "Okay. Why."

"He had a knife. I knew I only had ta hit him once, he was going for Brown -"

"Who?"

"Mr. Brown, the mouthy fuck. One of our perps." The way Larry said 'our', as if he were responsible for seeing these men safely to jail.

"I take it you got the cat in the head and he died before he hit the pavement."

"Yeah," Larry was visibly shaken. "I had to play it cool, like I did that kinda shit all the time."

"You think they bought it?"

"I know they did. I was celebrated."

There was a static silence, immovable. Holdaway started nodding again. "I can give you the office of our agency therapist. Out-of-town place, real discrete. Maybe you take a few days off, under the Cabots' radar. Make up some excuse - even hardass gangsters have families, right? Get back to the scene when you're all figured out." Larry was shaking his head, but Holdaway took him by the shoulders. "This ain't your first accidental kill and it won't be your last. We gotta make sure one thing is crystal, though."

Sullenly, "What"

"Did this incident compromise the case?"

"... No."

"Did this incident, in fact, solidify your cover?"

"Maybe. But that don't -"

"Nuh-uh, button it. What you did out there with a pipe wasn't any different than what our little brothers in blue do every day with bullets. You were protecting someone. It was an accident. Buck the fuck up, Agent."

Larry was nodding, now. "I don't need to take any time away from this, I just needed to let you know. You know. If it ever came up in the trial, there'd be a liability."

"You're going to the office in Bakersfield or we'll pull you out."

Thunderous silence.

Larry would be glowing in the dark by the end of this, from all the shock. "Wh-"

"I read your case files long before you even got to Cali, man, I know what went down before you got the kick. They should have retired you. Didn't want to waste the resource I guess."

"I'm too young to be retired." The words were distant.

"You're too young to let your job kill you slowly from the inside." Holdaway straightened, walking backwards with his hands in his pockets. "You're going to therapy, and you're not giving me shit about it, and when you come back you're going to crack this motherfucking heist wide open."

Larry aimed a tired smile at his shoes. By the time he looked up, Holdaway had gone.

* * *

The Kingpin Summary had ended bloody; it had also ended prematurely.

An undercover agent is never given a deadline, is never pressured into pushing something that needs to be acted out at its own pace. The job takes as long as the crime does, sometimes even longer if constructing a setup (or in the name of gathering hard evidence, which was more dangerous). Micky had been half a year in blackout, and Salvatore was only just getting antsy that maybe his gang was being compromised from the inside.

Ah, fuck, how to describe the Salvatores. Ruthless. A little too proud, too vain. All in all, supercool. Sharp, classy, confident. They had a code, too, something that made them respectable in the community. Untouchable. It was a big case, and Micky was at the top of his game.

The drug trade was a young man's pursuit; all the old Sicilian blood had gotten fat on bootleg and gambling and immigration extortion. Isaac Salvatore was at the top of his game, too, running the market with the Columbians. Micky was just the bum who drove the car. There was no good reason for Salvatore to ever take an interest in Micky, no possible way he could have known about the wire and the recorder and the late nights rifling through offices for laundering evidence (and there was always evidence when you had to clean that much income). They hardly knew each other but as coworkers. Fuck, Micky didn't even know the guy was Kingpin until his brother shot a man for errant disrespect.

And there was no real reason for Kingpin fucking Salvatore to take an interest in Micky, but he did. And when the gang boss you're pretending to work under takes an interest in you, you fucking play it out like the career opportunity it is. They got close. Micky was just doing his job, rifling up any and all information for the wire transcripts to nibble out.

It wasn't smooth sailing exactly, but it was work getting done. Until one night maybe Micky rifles a little too deep, asks unimportant questions, is a little too nice, a little too much of a friend. It wasn't any sort of suspicion by then, not yet, not for him anyway, but it was a slip-up. He should have moderated himself, kept shit professional and unattached.

To this day, Larry can't figure if getting that close to Salvatore had saved his life or not. As said, the Salvatores were vain; Isaac willing to believe more readily that he was an object of desire to those that he, well, desired. Micky didn't like Isaac. The man was kind of a bastard, on top of all the drug dealing and bullying and sociopathic disregard for human life. But hell if Micky didn't want to fuck the guy.

They fucked eventually; not that night but a few weeks later when it had become evident that continued use of the wire was too risky. Salvatore's suspicion on the crack-down at the Columbians' warehouse had everyone tense. His brother had taken the numbers to the crematorium, and all Micky had to do was weather the scrutiny until things went back to normal.

A month, he'd been told. Give it a month, and when Kingpin pokes his head out of the sand they'll have half the station waiting on the bust. Micky just had to give a time and a place, and stick to using payphones.

In the meantime, Micky was fucking Salvatore's pretty Italian brains out; because there was no reason not to, because it would be suspicious if he didn't, because he was young and overconfident and shallow. It was like crossing the street and getting broadsided by a taxi, bam, bright yellow pain, out of nowhere, Isaac - fucking Kingpin Salvatore - was in love with Micky the Bat (you know, baseball bat, as in that's what he used on punks what thought laying pipe made you some sorta fag).

It was a breakdown, Isaac out alone (he never went alone, wasn't safe, christ his brother was going to kill him if the competition didn't do it). He caught up to Micky's elbow in the crowd on Main and Fourth. Needed to talk, could they go to his apartment, it was cold. Nobody was prepared for it.

Micky had been in blackout for seven months and counting. Lawrence Dimmick was from a long line of Irish beat cops. Haverd Dimmick was his father. That day in September was Micky's twenty-eighth birthday.

Micky had unlocked the apartment building. They stalled in the atrium, intimate and reassuring. Isaac's guns heavy and familiar at his shoulder holster, nestled in the crook of his hip.

Micky's folks had been visiting family in Canada that fall. They didn't know about the blackout. They were supposed to be in Canada.

You know where this is going already, but the DA head and his wife and all his parents' friends didn't know, couldn't know; they sprang up when the lights came on to scream about a happy birthday and it all just ended in blood.

The only one who died? Society wouldn't miss him. Case drew to a close, evidence turned in and a trial was conducted, dragged on, got bought out. Isaac's brother inherited the sentence, skipped bail and the east coast wasn't safe for Micky anymore so Micky traded the freezing dockside warehouses of the Atlantic for stifling dockside warehouses of the Pacific.

And that was that.

"I see." The therapist sat forward at his desk, reviewing the contents of a manilla medical folder. "How are you sleeping these days, agent?"

Larry sighed, fighting for comfort in the overstuffed armchair. "Better." It was going to be a long weekend.


	5. Discredible

Heat had a strange effect on a city.

The difference between New York and Los Angeles was that New York crime was cold, calculated, meditated. You got the occasional drunk incident, sure, but usually, _usually_ the crime was a byproduct of something else. Some deal, some plot, a theft or revenge.  Clear headed, impartial.

Los Angeles crime was a different animal entirely. Heat was bad for the temper, made the blood boil - tricky for a guy who wasn't used to it. Dangerous, even. Larry had swung that lead pipe at that berk's head like a batter at field, and the homerun had splattered all over Mr. Brown's Walten Penns. The crime in L.A. was intemperate, desperate like an addiction, as scattered as rain from the sky.

And if it wasn't violence brought to the forefront of a man's mind, then sex was the bell quick to clamor after. The heat whittled the mind down to its bare operations; even just to breathe was like being slightly drunk all the time, blood thick and ears red. L.A. was the day to New York's night, and Jesus, was that sun blinding.

Mr. White had rung Nice Guy Eddie to warn he'd be out of town for a while, which plied a bit of information loose at long last: a schedule. The diamonds were going to be shipped in soon, less than a month. By the time Larry got back into town on the head-doctor's green light, the group was buckling down.

Picking out a rendezvous, studying street maps and store blueprints, watching every single employee's comings and goings. One would think there would be less time for bullshit, but the frequency of the working afternoons only doubled the number of celebratory nights. It was as much hard work just surviving the hangover as it was staking out the job on Karina's Jewelry and Gifts, blood thick and lungs hungry for a cigarette while L.A. carried on relentlessly sunny.

White wasn't asked on any more jobs (Papa Joe felt a debt was owed after that mess with the streeter), but he did become the salesman for the highest quality ganja the LAPD confiscation room could provide. Longbeach managed to push a few other things into the suitcase, courtesy precaution. Nothing too hard, nothing that would pull up a nasty dependence or attract the wrath of whoever held the market on that side of the city, just bullshit college stuff, mushrooms and ecstasy and a foil sheet of speed tablets. It all went into the floor vault next to the garbage bag that held Larry's badge and official effects, perhaps not to be touched until the end of the case, unless Longbeach did something stupid like run his mouth off to Nice-Guy about the product one Mr. White Russian just got ahold of and wasn't this Saturday going to be shit for weather, so how about being stuck inside during a tropical storm and _not_  tripping balls, that didn't sound like much fun did it.

Holdaway was right, Longbeach was kind of a piece of shit.

The coming storm pushed the heat before it in an unbearable crest, and even once the rain started the streets didn't have the good sense to cool down. The air got thick. Larry's brains felt stewed. Eddie wanted to buy, but White didn't want to sell.

Eddie would pay top dollar, hell, he'd out-pay whoever White was holding for.

"I don't do business like that." Larry clamps the phone between ear and shoulder, frowning at the fresh coat of paint in his empty breakfast nook, that wasn't going to dry anytime soon in this humidity. God, but the fumes were starting to really bug him. He had to get out of there.

Muffled voices tumble around on the other end of the line. Eddie comes back with authority, "Mike says you owe him."

Oh. So that was it. Longbeach just wanted to get some of his product back; probably bullied into giving it up for free in the first place. Larry sighs like maybe he's contemplating it. "So do I come to you, or...?"

"You fukken kiddin' me?" Eddie laughs. "Of course, man, we're making a party out of it. Watch out for flying houses." The line goes click, and Larry listens hard for the white noise of a wire tap. Adrenaline punches him hard in the gut when he hears it, an extra static that blanks out seconds in delay, no louder than a dropped paperclip.

* * *

"You sure this guy's cool?"

Orange glances over to Nice-Guy with evident boredom, curled up in an office chair with last week's crossword balanced on his knee. "Which one?"

"White. Man just got back from a trip with a suitcase full of party favors that he don't even wanna sell."

Orange looks to Longbeach Mike, who shrugs. "I never said he was cool, I said he was trustworthy. Saved Brown's ass, didn't he?"

"Yeah,"  Nice-Guy agrees, reluctantly.  "Just seems weird to me, sometimes. That guy."

"Hey," Orange snaps, "Maybe he just didn't want to leave the house, you ever think of that? Man's prob'ly never seen a tropical storm before, and you've got him on delivery like -"

"Like a professional fucking salesman?"

"Like some chinese clown with the evening's take-out." Orange is agitated. Everyone is agitated. Blue is the only one who seems unruffled by the weather, but he was down in the parlor sharking Poker with Pink and Joe. Orange uncurls from the couch, escaping Eddie's uncharacteristic grumbling before he could do something he'd regret.

The methadone wasn't working so good; well, it was doing its job as far as weaning Orange off the opiates, but it wasn't the blank high of heroin and the side-effects were uncomfortable. Cold turkey hadn't worked for him, had nearly killed him, so he was on this program and every morning was like having fresh needles stuck under his fingernails and every night was like trying to sleep with the television stuck on loud. The heat, the storm, the stress of the approaching job, none of this did anything to help his mood.

And Orange could be a right awful fuck when he was in a bad mood.

The rain sheeting the cultivated landscape of the Cabots' front yard is hard and weighty, but warm. Orange can almost drown standing there, blowing the wet from his nose and mouth with each breath, nearly blinded by the downpour. He wants to stay out there until he cools off, until he's shivering and hungry, but steam is rising from the streets and the wrap-around driveway like it's Hell getting doused and nothing is getting any cooler, heat spreading thick and fragrant to the next something else, the world bleeding together.

The rain smells like pavement. Orange's clothes smell like cigarettes. The cab pulling up is little more than a careful yellow blur, driven by an inveterate Californian with the fearless power-chords of heavy metal ping-bopping through the rush of wind and water. White dodges from the cab to the house's front alcove. He turns, a tourist in a loud Hawaiian shirt, blinking silently over at Orange from under that shelter.

Orange beckons White back out into the rain as the cab pulls away.

Because White trusts Orange, because Larry is friendly and stalwart and wants to see all his perps safely to jail, Larry sets his briefcase on the alcove steps to join Orange out in the rain, to see what the fuck could be the matter.

Because Freddy is not in any way a functioning member of society, because he'd seen White kill a man with a single magnificent blow, and because he wants something to forget himself in, Orange punches White full and quick across the top of his nose, and then punches White hard and clumsy against his cheek, and keeps swinging until White is fighting back.

Orange loses fantastically, underfed and always a little hungover; but for a moment, when everything in the world is upside down, the pain makes sense. It's familiar. It isn't a cure, that ache in his ribs or stinging in his face, but it _is_ a distraction, all he was ever going to get. Sure, he still feels like shit by the time White has them inside soaking the carpet of the atrium, but it's a different kind of shit - one that Orange had chosen to bring upon himself instead of just rolling over under the glare of the usual Old Bad.

"You know that guy with the bell and the drooling dog?" Orange can stand on his own, but he likes the way White carries his arm over his shoulder, gripping Orange's wrist. Likes the way White kicks the briefcase inside, like his product is less important than keeping Orange upright.

"No." White is either angry or... well, no, he seems plenty angry. That flicker in his eyes, with his eyelashes clumping dark and pretty from the rain, there was no way that was fear.

"C'mon, you know who I mean. You're smart."

"I ain't, and I don't know what you're talking about," White hisses through clenched teeth. "I don't know what you consider smart, or what the fuck you were thinking just now, but I -" White stands Orange up against the wall, a potted plant dislodged by their collision. He's fuming, the steam of sweat and rain and exertion visibly rising from them both in the cool Central Air of the Cabot house. "I got nothing to do with it."

Orange runs a tongue over his front teeth, matching White's hard stare with a smile that doesn't survive the attempt. "Payload, or something Russian like it... Pavlov, that was it. Pavlov's dog, see, he'd feed it and ring this bell. Then he'd ring the bell and the dog would drool because it was expecting food."

White has backed off, bloodied and scraped up and dusted off and pasted together by the rain.

Orange's grin isn't pretty. It isn't nice, it isn't sexy. It's trashy, and self-depreciating, and bashful; a close relative to the sneer, or maybe what animals did when they bared their teeth at each other. "I fight my wife like that, sometimes. And then we fuck like the world is ending." He detaches from the wall, shoes squelching obscenely. "It's all Pavlov for me right now, see." The storm has picked up, now more wind than downpour, howling and rushing and the distant bang of toppling garbage bins, scattered lawn furniture.

White startles, apprehensively pacing to the door to shut it securely against the lash of the storm.

Orange laughs, genuinely amused. "It's like the world really is ending. Why aren't you on my dick yet?"

White glares over his shoulder, plucking at the front of his (now transparent) shirt to unstick it from his chest. "Because I'd rather not catch pneumonia. If it's all the same to you."

Orange is affronted, and jokes - "I already told you, asshole; I'm clean." But he's really more interested in the contents of White's briefcase, and leads him down the hall to the office where Eddie and Brown were vehemently discussing the Jackson Five.

Nice-Guy's cheer turns to instant concern. "Mother Mary of GOD, what the fuck happened to you two?"

"Here," White tosses the case to Longbeach, who catches it with a flinch. "Nineteen for the lot of it; I'm done with this shit."

"Nineteen hundred?" Eddie gingerly accepts the briefcase and flips it open. He considers the baggies and the pills and the small brick of weed.

"Yeah. Is there a problem?"

"You look like you had to dive under a moving tractor to get this shit, so yeah I think there might be. Why so cheap?"

White's scowl takes the room temperature down a degree. He jabs an arm out at Orange, who is dripping all over the Persian carpet. "Dealing with nutcases like this on an everyday basis turned my stomach against the trade, that's why. I'm on this job because I want out of this shit-hole country with its shit-heel tweakers." He directs his point at Longbeach, and holds the man's attention for a long moment, threatening.

"O... kay." Eddie sits to sort the case out properly, reaching under his desk for a neat stack of Grants. "I think we all need to break into this sweet cache sooner rather than later. Bring the chill back to Cali. White, you want to count your money?"

White takes the cash, distracted still with trying to stare Longbeach into a cold sweat. "No need. I trust you."

"Good. Orange, you wanna tell Blondie and the others -"

"I'm not your fucking errand boy."

Eddie throws his hands up. _"Fine_. I'm going to the parlor then, if you ladies want to get off your periods and join us." He closes the briefcase with a snap. Eddie pauses at the door, Longbeach pressing through to escape White. "Towels in the groundfloor bathroom, tumble dryer in that closet near the kitchen. Orange, you know the one. Papa sees you tracking half the ocean all over the hardwood floors, he'll give you a reason to act like a little bitch."

Orange stands straight.

Eddie tilts his chin, raises his eyebrows.

Orange sneers, turns his shoulder to bump White. "I'll lead the way."

* * *

Their nudity is utility, towels around hips like a day at the sauna, loitering around the walk-in laundry closet. White is perched on the Maytag washer, probing a loose tooth with his fingers while the dryer hums beside.

Orange is pacing just outside the open lattice door, glancing up at the clatters and voices from somewhere in the front of the big house. Laughter, decidedly female. "Joe musta sent his car out," Orange muses, shuffling into the cozier press of the laundry room. An old woman with a teal apron and a ponytail passes the doorway and Orange waves with his mouth pursed up in apology. "Gloria."

Gloria peeks her head in, frowns at White and leaves.

White's laugh is a silent hitch of his chest. "She thinks I beat you up."

"You did beat me up."

"Pneumonia ain't a VD."

"I know. I was trying to get a laugh out of you."

An easy silence falls between them, White sucking at his loose molar with a grimace. "If I lose this tooth, you're footing the bill."

Orange shrugs, pats down his hips for a cigarette before he realizes towels don't have pockets. "Sorry."  They'd emptied their pockets atop the washer, a small pile Orange doesn't want to reach for, damp cigarette packets and soggy wallets that may or may not have condoms inside.

White relents his attention, hands braced on bare knees. "What the fuck were you thinking, flying at me like that?"

"Hawaiian shirts don't suit you."

White delivers a hard, blank stare.

Orange's grin is less ugly this time around. "Whaaaat? That's what I was thinkin', honest injun." He's got both hands held up, waving tiredly. A chain-link tattoo winds itself around his left bicep, a small star on the inside of his wrist. A snake coils over his ribs, the ink matted and marred by what White can recognize as a knife scar.

"Says the punk in the cowhide, like he's in a fukken rock band," White's accusation is soft, though. Kind.

"Who you callin' a punk, punk?" Orange rucks his damp hair back in a slick, feints a jab, there's a dull noise of bare skin meeting bare skin and suddenly their nudity isn't just utility and Orange isn't a nice guy and never will be and he never had scruples and he was never really all that patient or smart or attractive but dammit he knew what he liked and he was in the business of getting what he wanted so, so.

White's half-caught in the playful grapple and he already knows where this is going and doesn't care. Serve them both right if they got caught. He's sore and he's still scared that Orange had somehow found him out and he's raw and angry and his head is buzzing with the rain. His knee is snug against Orange's bony hip and all he can think about when Orange is kissing on him is how much he wants to get the guy a proper fucking steak dinner.

Orange reaches blindly out to slam the slatted door of the laundry room shut. He's got a hand under White's towel next minute, long fingers wrapping around White's half-agitated prick to jerk him slow beneath the terrycloth.

Orange doesn't taste like cocaine this time around. Maybe there's blood, but then again maybe it's just White's blood, or the cigarettes on Orange's breath mistaken for the cigarettes White had smoked on the cab ride there. Orange doesn't taste distinct, is the thing. It's just another mouth, another dry insistent press going wet and deep because Orange is some kinda sap and can't just pull a guy off without making it personal.

White doesn't reciprocate the handjob, doesn't even bother to offer. He bites the swell of Orange's split lip because he's still kinda pissed over the fight and now angry at this fresh disregard for his boundaries.

Orange presses his thighs flush against the edge of the Maytag, leaning bodily into White's heat. Dirty blonde hair falling out of its slick-back. Thumb coaxing encouragement at the base of White's dick. "Is this good?" He kneads lightly at the soft vulnerability between White's shaft and sac, then more firmly, thumb exploring in circles. "Feels good when I do it to myself. Could just be me, though."

White doesn't bother to answer, hands braced back on the cool metal top of the machine. His eyes are glued to the way Orange's hand disappears under the towel, to the rise and fall of the fabric like a third heart beating between them as he gets worked. He's playing it cool, but he also can't face the heat in Orange's eyes. His pulse is thrumming, breath quicker and deeper.

"White," Orange pleads quietly. "Answer me. 'S it good or not?"

White doesn't say. He looks just over Orange's shoulder at the fresh linens on the shelves. Swallows hard a few times, spreads his legs in answer to the thumb now pressing quick and sure under his sac.  _That_  feels good enough to earn a breathy groan, but White kinda likes holding out on Orange, wants to see if ... well, he doesn't know what. Half of him doesn't even want to be in that dim little room, but it's too busy arguing with the half of him that hasn't been laid in months to really say stop.

And again, there was no good reason for the indiscriminate thug White was supposed to be to put a stop to this. Morals, standards, those were all good and well for fleshing out a character, but when it came right down to it he and Orange were supposed to be cut from the same underbelly cloth. Impulsive, selfish, devil-may-give-a-fuck. White is stalled by the kiss. It just doesn't match up with the sleeze of their coupling, the way Orange pecks at his mouth, urging in a breath, going for broke as their bruised faces brush and parry.

He's gotta distance himself from this, does White. He gets a hand on Orange's shoulder, trying not to grip too hard as he pushes the guy slowly out of kissing range. And, because this is improv and Mr. White Russian has to be just a bit of a bastard, his grip rounds the back of Orange's neck and pushes _down._

Orange opens White's towel, curls in to wrap the hot swell of his punched mouth over White's cockhead, sucking him down like he's being paid for it, arm draped snug over the top of White's hard thigh, elbow propped opposite to push his legs open a little further.

White scrubs his fingers into Orange's damp hair, hips twitching forward, pleasure winding tighter in his guts the further he drags Orange down on his dick.  "Yeah," he answers Orange's question late, husked and slurred like he's drunk.  "Yeah that is, that's real good."

Orange electrifies, elbows and knees knocking atop and against the Maytag to push in, relents White's dick to gather him closer, the spidery grab of his (Christ, strong) hands digging White's towel out of the way to take his ass, drag him forward into the grind. 

 _"Jesus -"_   White's heels hit the hollow metal siding of the Maytag in concert with Orange's knees, sparks trawling up from his balls to the floor of his lungs, stealing his breath.  Like the fly that lands in that toothy trap flower, squeezed of life.

Orange only grips harder, drags his open mouth along the side of White's neck and down again, breath scraping hot against rain-chilled skin in the labored bursts of the aimlessly aroused; dick a hard roll under damp terrycloth. 

"You tryna get smacked," White husks, reaching back to grab Orange's wrists, tug his fingers out of his asscrack. "Could just ask." He swallows, catching his breath. "Don't gotta assault nobody."

Orange tangles their fingers together, jerks forward in a shallow body-check and pushes his nose in against the jumping pulse just below White's ear, smiling. "Y'mean for right now, or twenty minutes ago?"

White considers, gives up trying to pull his hands free, cock lain flush between them, feeling his own heartbeat run along the cradle of Orange's rocky abdomen. "Both. 'Matter with you today, anyway?"

Orange only grunts, sniffles, closes his elbows in to bracket White's ribs.  "Methadone.  What'sa matta with you?"

"Some punk jumped me in the front yard."

Orange scoffs.  "And molested you in the locker room.  You wanna get off, or should I leave?"

White couldn't leave the closet with a hard-on, and it wasn't like he had anywhere else to go, anything else to do, pulse thick and thoughts thin. "You want to actually try to get me off," he asks, shifting his weight. He swallows, tucks his bottom lip against his teeth in a brief swipe. "Instead of proposin' marriage?"

The wind outside knocks treefall and rain down the chimneys, a clatter that heralds the flicker of the house lights, power outage plunging the closet into dark. Further in the house, people cheer, someone two rooms away opens a door or window to howl at the storm and all the pressure leaves the Cabot mansion halls. White's ears pop; he works his jaw, blinking in the pitch dark, watching the pale blue strips of the closet door slats, daylight steadily dimmer through the kitchen windows outside of their hold.

Orange kneads White's hands in his own, wags them out in a playful shake, and lets go to brace behind White's calves instead. He runs his fingernails down the soft back of White's knees, finding a scar that he inspects with the round heel of his thumb. "What I want is to get fucked, but my date ain't forgiven me for the black eye yet."

White can't help but feel slightly flattered, and more than slightly alarmed. There was fooling around with a guy to pass time, and then there was _that._

Orange chuckles at the answering silence, wraps his grip firmer behind White's knees, and yanks.

White's bare heels skid the linoleum, elbows thrown out to brace atop the machines, lower back friction-scuffed as he catches his weight. "Tchesus," he hisses, catching himself upright.

Orange is just a handful of sensations in the dark; the brace of his leg and hip to keep White pinned, the wrap of damp fingers squeezing and tugging at White's erection, the sweat-tacky bumps of his chest and face against White's chest and face, the sympathetic hitch in his breathing as he hastens, loose fist beating faster.  "That's it,"  Orange urges quietly, and he smells like wet hair and the onion of sweat; and his breath tastes like the warm mushroom of a mouthful of cock; and he sounds like a congested head, from the weather or the fistfight, cigarettes or a snoutful of coke.  "C'mon baby, give it up -"

White grips the ledge of the machine with a squeak of slippery palms and comes undone, elbows braced straight to help push himself up against Orange, into his hand.  

"Yeah," Orange croons, stomach flinching against the hot dribble of White's cum, the jacking caress of his fist slowing, tightening to a lazy wring.

White grunts, ass flinching back against the lip of the Maytag. "Easy," he scorns.

"Nah," Orange scoffs, jerking his towel loose, open, a rustle in the dark.  "You ever beat another guy off, Suzy Q?" He relents White's dick to more comfortably crowd against him, that same prom-dance embrace, towel dropping with a soft thump, dick a hot slug pressing into the cradle of White's hip.

The question stuns White, made worse by his post-cum wooziness, and he can't answer - because _of course he has,_ but so what?

Orange links his fingers together behind the tension of White's lower back, fidgets to plant his hands atop the washer instead, nose finding White's neck in the dark to carefully suggest, "I mean. Y'don't gotta."

White finds his voice about the time the dryer stutters to its stop.  "So maybe I won't, okay?  You come flying at a guy, bloody his face - that's not how this works.  I don't work like that."  He can feel Orange's ear brush his jaw, a nod.  White lowers his voice, the laundry closet quieter.  "What do you want from me, anyway?"

Orange's chest jerks, a silent scoff.  "A handy."

"I'm serious. No more bullshit. C'mon, what's - why you bothering me like this?"

Orange exhales, plants a loud smacking kiss on the terse hill of White's shoulder.

"Hahn?" White prompts, knuckles bracing into Orange's hips to push a little space between them. "Tell me, was it somethin' I ever said to you?" He lets Orange's weight collide softly back into him, pushes out again, which becomes an ebbing rock, a battering like moths against glass.

"Nothin'," Orange whispers, paws his way around White's shoulders, behind his neck, a steely clutch, undaunted. "Ain't nothing you said -" but he runs out of explanation, rucking up quicker against each of White's nudges back, fucking into the cradle of his hip. "Gahn, that's - can y'just -" Orange's arm fumbles against White's, down between them to grasp his own dick, and his breath heaves in a desperate chuckle.

White grunts in wordless question, still pushing Orange away in little kneading nudges, still a little breathless each time Orange pushes back.


End file.
